Boxing News - Latest Headlines

Lederman disgusted by Mayweather’s attack of 80-year-old Merchant

By Dan Ambrose: HBO unofficial fight judge Harold Lederman was disgusted with the verbal attack that Floyd Mayweather Jr. made upon 80-year-old HBO analyst Larry Merchant last Saturday night when Merchant made the mistake of questioning Mayweather about why he chose to hit Victor Ortiz with two shots when he was clearly not ready to fight.

Mayweather went into the attack mode, saying that HBO should fire Merchant and saying he doesn’t know “S*** about boxing.” Merchant was taken off guard by Mayweather’s point blank comments that went beyond just the fight, and retaliated by saying “If I were 50 years younger would I would kick your a**.”

Lederman said this to writer Michael Marley at examiner.com: “That was a disgrace. I’m sorry but you don’t attack an octogenarian [80-year-old] like that, it was disgraceful. They were talking about prize fighting, not world affairs…Floyd got too personal.”

I agree. Mayweather went right for the throat and all Merchant was doing was pointing out to Mayweather that the crowd was booing and didn’t like how it ended. Merchant just wanted to know what was going through Mayweather’s head when he decided to hit Ortiz when he had his hands down by his sides right after he hugged him.

There are many boxers, writers and boxing fans who think Mayweather was in the right to hit Ortiz when he had his hands down, saying that it’s “Protect yourself at all times” in the ring. But there are times when that really doesn’t apply and this was one of them. When I guy is apologizing, you don’t clobber him. I guess you can as long as the fight was restarted, but it’s just going to turns a lot of boxing fans off. I’d venture to guess that more people were turned off by this move then were impressed with it. There was nothing heroic about nailing a guy with his hands down by his sides, is there?